A little over an hour later, the four men were sitting at a table in the cafeteria of an autovia service area, each of them with a cup of coffee and a somewhat stale-looking Spanish equivalent of a French pain au chocolat in front of him.
Richter was probably nominally in charge, and he set the ball rolling.
‘Short term,’ he began, ‘we definitely need to keep moving. We left eight pissed-off Russians behind us in Cambrils, and what we did to their cars won’t hold them up very long. The Syrians are probably out of the running, but my guess is they were just hired for the job, which means somebody else was pulling their strings, so there may well be another hit team prowling around here trying to pick up our trail. I need to talk to my section about sorting out an aircraft, maybe a private jet or an RAF aircraft, to get us back to London so we can—’
‘Does anybody here have the slightest interest in what I have to say?’ Vernon interrupted, somewhat petulantly. ‘Or why I’m here? Or even why you’re here?’
‘We’re just trying to keep you safe, Professor,’ Richter said reassuringly. ‘That was what we were tasked with doing.’
‘I don’t doubt that,’ Vernon said, ‘but have none of you stopped to wonder why I did what I did?’
‘You said something about generating publicity,’ Moore said, ‘but I’ve got no idea why you thought you needed to do that.’
‘Exactly,’ Vernon snapped, as if he had just scored a point in a debate. ‘You have no idea. None of you have any idea what I was trying to achieve, or why. If you did know, then you would probably be doing everything very differently.’
That silenced Richter and the two CIA officers for a few moments. Then Masters put down his coffee cup and nodded encouragingly.
‘Okay, Professor. I’ve known you the shortest time out of the three of us, so why don’t you just assume that I’m an idiot who knows nothing at all about anything and tell me what the hell is going on and what you would like us to do about it.’
Vernon fixed Masters with a stare that at least suggested he was in agreement with the American’s assessment of his own level of intelligence.
‘First of all,’ he said, ‘I imagine you—’ he pointed his right forefinger directly at Richter ‘—being English have signed the Official Secrets Act, otherwise you wouldn’t be doing the job you appear to have been given. But please tell me that you have done that, and what your security clearance level is.’
‘I think I’ve signed it four times now,’ Richter replied, ‘and in my present employment my clearance is CTS – Cosmic Top Secret.’
‘Good.’ Vernon swung his finger to point at each of the Americans in turn. ‘And you two?’
‘We’re subject to the DoD – Department of Defense – classification system in the States,’ Masters replied, ‘and Rich and I both rate Top Secret on that scale, which I guess is pretty much the same as Paul’s CTS, except his covers him for atomic stuff.’
‘That means your clearances are higher than mine,’ Vernon said, looking slightly irritated by the realisation. ‘But I suppose that could be a good thing.’
Then he nodded, leaned forward and began to speak in a low, intense voice.
‘I’ve worked at the Dstl at Porton Down for several years, and I have a kind of roving brief. I am directed to do certain research as and when the situation warrants it, such as the recent poisoning attack in Salisbury using the Novichok nerve agent, but I am also able to pursue research of my own as long as it has some kind of relevance to the overall direction I have been given. I do not need to seek individual approval for this research unless I need help in carrying it out and have to ask one of my colleagues employed there or a scientist working at another establishment to assist me. That very rarely happens.’
None of that information seemed to any of the three men to be particularly sensitive, or even very interesting, so they stayed silent and waited for whatever else was to come.
‘About six months ago, and almost by accident, I discovered information relating to a trial that was carried out in Britain a couple of decades ago. The objective of the research was somewhat unusual and would have been unacceptable if the proposal had been made today. I researched it purely out of scientific interest, not least because I did not believe that the core concept of the programme was scientifically viable for at least two reasons. Within the documentation held at Porton Down I found the contact details for a scientist that I didn’t know personally, but I was familiar with his published work on other matters. Rather than plough through reams of paper, or to be more accurate to study the scans of reams of documents contained in the archive on my computer screen, I decided to give him a call and ask him directly about the project before I did anything else.’
Richter was almost certain that Vernon was talking about the TRAIT trial, but he said nothing, preferring to let the scientist explain things in his own words before revealing his own knowledge of the subject. Both Masters and Moore were looking at him enquiringly, and he microscopically shook his head, silently conveying to them his wish for Vernon to continue.
‘When I spoke to the man – his name was Hubert Jefferies and he was then working at one of the laboratories attached to Cambridge University – he barely remembered the trial until I reminded him, and even then he couldn’t recall too much about it. After all, he’d worked on it about twenty years earlier, so it wasn’t particularly recent. But my call must have interested him, because he rang me a few days later and told me he had accessed the scientific archive where the documentation was kept to refresh his memory. And he told me that he had discovered something rather curious, something built-in to the software that ran the archive.
‘Somebody had apparently installed what Jefferies described as a tripwire, a software routine that would alert a third party whenever that particular part of the archive was accessed and copy the contact details of the scientist making the access request to a particular website. A website that could not be found by a conventional search engine because it was located on what is commonly referred to as the Dark Web. He also told me that he had disabled the tripwire so that no details of further access requests would be transmitted to that website. That meant I could access the files held in the archive without my details being noted, except in the standard user record. And that is not accessible to anyone outside the scientific community.’
Vernon paused for a few seconds and glanced at each of the men in turn, perhaps to ensure that they were still paying attention. They were, so he continued.
‘Apart from the presence of the tripwire, which was clearly some kind of unauthorised addition to the software, that’s the kind of conversation that could take place between any two scientists working in different laboratories. But what made it different was that three days after that conversation Hubert Jefferies was killed in a road accident in Cambridge. There were several witnesses to the incident, and all the reports I’ve seen clearly show that it was a deliberate crash, not a hit-and-run using a stolen vehicle that went tragically wrong, though that appears to be the consensus view of the Cambridge police, probably because that’s the easy option for them.’
Again Vernon paused in his narrative and took a sip of his cooling coffee before he resumed.
‘When I talked to Jefferies, he quite clearly believed that the trial had been inconclusive and had been abandoned because the results obtained did not support its continuation. After Jefferies’s death, I looked much more carefully at the archived documentation, and what I found was an appalling shock. I had always had faith in the British Government and in the remit given to Porton Down, but what I discovered clearly showed how utterly mistaken I had been about this.’
Before Vernon could say anything else, Richter held up his hand, because it looked as if they were going to get the long version of the story, and he wasn’t entirely sure that they had time for that.
‘Let me stop you right there, Professor,’ Richter said, ‘just to save you going over old ground. I presume that you’re talking about the TRAIT trial?’
The shock on Vernon’s face as Richter said that was almost comical.
‘You know about TRAIT?’ he asked. ‘How?’
‘There have been quite a few developments since you hopped a flight from Heathrow to Toulouse, Professor,’ Richter said. ‘And one reason why we were so keen to find you – and perhaps why the Syrians or the Russians were so keen to kill you – is because we need your help in working out what’s happening and how we’re going to stop it. But why were you so keen to find out our security clearances? As far as we know, the TRAIT material has been declassified. It’s not exactly in the public domain, but it pretty much could be.’
‘You’re right. TRAIT is now unclassified, which is probably a mistake, but I just needed to make sure that if I discussed anything with you that was classified I wouldn’t be breaching the Official Secrets Act and find myself even deeper in the shit than I probably am already.’
Richter nodded. ‘Just one question, for the moment, if I may.’
Vernon looked at him, waiting.
‘Why did you leave such a confusing trail back in England before you boarded that flight? The inflatable doll, changing the number plates on the car, all that sort of stuff to muddy the waters?’
‘I was trying to attract attention,’ Vernon said. ‘I didn’t want to end up like Hubert Jefferies, as an unresolved road accident or something of that sort. I wanted people to know my name. I wanted to read in the newspapers and hear on the news about the renegade professor offering to supply weapons of mass destruction to anyone who could pay for them. I thought that if I managed to achieve a certain level of notoriety, when I exposed the appalling results of the trials linked to TRAIT people would actually listen to me because they would already know my name. I grant you I would be notorious for the wrong reasons but offering to break the law is not in itself an offence. And as I’ve already told you, I had not the slightest intention of delivering any kind of a weapon to anyone. I was just looking for publicity because with publicity comes protection.
‘And the reason I was trying to muddy the waters, as you put it, was that if I could leave everybody guessing about whether I had defected or had been abducted, then the British security establishment would be certain to send people out after me, to haul me back to England to face prolonged questioning sessions, and that of course was exactly what I wanted. Once I was safely in the bowels of MI5 or MI6, I would be able to reveal what I knew, and have a fighting chance of saving my life at the same time. I was quite certain that whoever killed Hubert Jefferies would have me on their list as well, and assassinating an elderly man like me, a man nobody outside a fairly small part of the scientific community would ever have heard of, at my home or on the way to or from work, would be comparatively easy. Knocking off the renegade biochemist while under the protection of the security services would be much more difficult.’
‘You could have just gone to your bosses at Porton Down and explained what you found, surely?’ Richter asked.
Vernon shook his head.
‘First of all, I wasn’t sure how deep the conspiracy went. One of the scientists employed there until recently was in many ways the prime mover behind TRAIT. If I’d simply blown the whistle I suspect I would have met with a fatal accident that little bit sooner, and everything that had already been buried about the trial would just be buried that little bit deeper. And, second, outside the world of chemistry and biochemistry nobody knows who I am, and any claims that I made about TRAIT could easily just be dismissed by the scientific community as the ramblings of an old man who has lost the plot. And shortly afterwards, I expect I would also have been involved in unfortunate motor accident or something of that sort. That was why I needed the publicity, so that my name and the information that I’ve obtained would just not simply be buried along with my body.’
It still sounded to Richter as if there might have been easier ways for Vernon to achieve what he wanted, but at least what the man had said did make sense and explained what had happened. What they had to do now was get the scientist to a safe place and then try and work out a way of countering the threat that Martin Wilmot had described so explicitly in the note he had left in his study.
‘Time to get things moving,’ Richter said, and took out his mobile phone.
He dialled Simpson’s direct line, not really expecting his boss to still be in the building at that time of the evening, but in fact he picked up almost immediately.
‘Yes, Richter?’ he said.
‘We have Charles Vernon, but we’re still in Spain and we need to get him back to England as quickly and safely as possible. Can you lay on an aircraft to pick up four passengers, ideally at an airfield not too far from Tarragona and preferably tonight?’
‘You didn’t really have to tell me where you were, Richter. If you turn on Sky News or the BB bloody C they’re full of reports about terrorist atrocities at Cambrils. Two civilians dead at the last count, one badly injured, and a kind of Gunfight at the OK Corral thing that’s been going on there for most of the evening. I suppose there’s not even the slightest chance that you and your two American boyfriends weren’t involved?’
The way Simpson said it made it clear that it was a question.
‘We may have had something to do with it,’ Richter admitted, ‘but as usual the media have managed to get the whole thing arse backwards. Unless something else has happened, the two dead civilians were actually a pair of Syrian hitmen who turned up waving nine mil Brownings and a Škorpion submachine gun, and the injured civilian was the third man in the trio. Apart from those three, the damage we caused was to motor vehicles, not people. You may also be interested to learn that we encountered two separate groups of Russians, each a four-man team, and all of them carrying weapons.’
‘Syrians?’ Simpson sounded puzzled. ‘Why would the Syrians be involved?’
‘First, they may not be Syrian, and they might be travelling on forged passports, in which case they could be from any of the Middle Eastern countries. Second, my guess is that they were just a hit team, being paid to find and eliminate Charles Vernon, so I’m not reading too much into it.’
‘Okay. No doubt things will become a bit clearer later. In the meantime, get yourselves over to Reus Airport. There’s a Learjet on its way there right now from Ramstein in Germany, courtesy of the Company, and that’s going to ferry you to Northolt. According to the last estimate I was given, it should be there in about half an hour, so look sharp. When you get there, don’t go to departures, just take the first exit off the roundabout and head for the Real Aeroclub de Reus building. Somebody will meet you there.’
‘That was quick.’
‘Not really. The moment we heard about the first shots fired we figured it was you and kicked the exit plan into operation. We had three aircraft we could re-task, and the Lear out of Ramstein was the closest. When you get here, come straight to the office. We need to pick Vernon’s brain right now.’